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"The FCC Still Doesn't Know How the Internet Works" (eff.org)
An anonymous reader writes:
The EFF describes the FCC's official plan to kill net neutrality as "riddled with technical errors and factual inaccuracies," including, for example, a false distinction between "Internet access service" and "a distinct transmission service" which the EFF calls "utterly ridiculous and completely ungrounded from reality."
"Besides not understanding how Internet access works, the FCC also has a troublingly limited knowledge of how the Domain Name System (DNS) works -- even though hundreds of engineers tried to explain it to them this past summer... As the FCC would have it, an Internet user actively expects their ISP to provide DNS to them." And in addition, "Like DNS, it treats caching as if it were some specialized service rather than an implementation detail and general-purpose computing technique."
"There are at least two possible explanations for all of these misunderstandings and technical errors. One is that, as we've suggested, the FCC doesn't understand how the Internet works. The second is that it doesn't care, because its real goal is simply to cobble together some technical justification for its plan to kill net neutrality. A linchpin of that plan is to reclassify broadband as an 'information service,' (rather than a 'telecommunications service,' or common carrier) and the FCC needs to offer some basis for it. So, we fear, it's making one up, and hoping no one will notice."
"We noticed," their editorial ends, urging Americans "to tell your lawmakers: Don't let the FCC sell the Internet out."
"Besides not understanding how Internet access works, the FCC also has a troublingly limited knowledge of how the Domain Name System (DNS) works -- even though hundreds of engineers tried to explain it to them this past summer... As the FCC would have it, an Internet user actively expects their ISP to provide DNS to them." And in addition, "Like DNS, it treats caching as if it were some specialized service rather than an implementation detail and general-purpose computing technique."
"There are at least two possible explanations for all of these misunderstandings and technical errors. One is that, as we've suggested, the FCC doesn't understand how the Internet works. The second is that it doesn't care, because its real goal is simply to cobble together some technical justification for its plan to kill net neutrality. A linchpin of that plan is to reclassify broadband as an 'information service,' (rather than a 'telecommunications service,' or common carrier) and the FCC needs to offer some basis for it. So, we fear, it's making one up, and hoping no one will notice."
"We noticed," their editorial ends, urging Americans "to tell your lawmakers: Don't let the FCC sell the Internet out."
Honestly, what can we do? This is an unelected board with a majority that will change this no matter what we say. Congress has not taken up the issue in any way, and doesn't seem to have any intention of ever doing so, so what would be the purpose of writing to them? It just looks to me like Ajit Pai is going to force this measure through, no matter the science, business, societal, or ethical concerns.
In short, the current FCC doesn't give a damn about any of us.
Come on it's just a series of tubes, it's not that hard to figure out.
Don't blame the FCC, blame the 48% that voted to put a lunatic administration in charge. If you assign a wolf to protect the chickens, you don't blame the wolf for eating the chickens.
Not sure they're just idiots.
Oh, why not corrupt ? It also works, isn't it ?
Totof
Let's put an organisation which didn't understand how the internet works in charge of regulating the internet! What could go wrong?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You have to classify traffic to prevent congestion. Congestion will break the interwebz. As soon as you're classifying traffic, which is already happening, you have no neutrality If you want a simple example of how neutrality breaks shared and limited resources, remove quotas from your file system or schedulers from CPU resource management. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
As long as they keep you guys crying like bitches, I'll be happy. haha
So Obama screwed up Iraq because Bush took it over and he just wanted to undo anything Bush had done?
That's the level of your argument. Perhaps you could engage with what people are actually saying and doing, rather than inventing straw men that only make you look bad, not your opponents?
Stop listening to desperate EFF liberal whiners and culture marxists. Now that we are finally getting rid of all the regulations, the internet is set to take off. I am 100% American and I, like millions others high experience IT professionals, fully support repealing all so called "net neutrality" regulation because even a few minutes of thought reveals it is the best thing for bringing total freedom to internet.
Is the Internet really a series of tubes (regulated as telecommunications infrastructure is)? Or are we talking about data transmitted through various communications mediums (regulated as an "information service")? The answer, it turns out, is pretty important when it comes to our pre-existing laws. If the Internet is more than just data transmitted over radio/fiber/copper, then we need to come up with new legal definitions for what constitutes "telecommunications."
Everybody knows the internet is made up of tubes and highways.
So the FCC is removing rules they put in place based on a law passed in the early 1900's. The FCC knows nothing about how the internet works.
This seems like a good thing. The government is about making rules, and experience says that they do not really care if it is a good rule or not, just that they get paid a lot of money to make it.
I do not understand how many people expect a group that knows nothing about the internet can be expected to make a good decision about what is best for it. If you want to know how to improve ISP's, ask the people who are starting successful ISP businesses, and if there are not any, research why, before insisting on rules from the top down.
I do not want a know-nothing FCC making rules about how the internet should remain pure. If you want a pure internet get rid of the rules in your local governments that prevent other providers from providing your area a service. Open markets where customers are in charge. The reason areas only have one or two providers is because of government rules preventing smaller companies from installing fiber. Take away the government instituted monopolies and the free market can and does work.
It is easier to change policy for large corporations than it is the government. Companies can fail and die. If a government fails, well, look at Greece.
Now the public can demand companies start blocking access to the popular right wing extremist sites. Private companies don't have to provide idiots with free speech.
So, they didn't know this back in 2015 either, when the "Net Neutrality" was enacted?
Or, maybe, the government should not be telling, how owners of the wires deal with their customers at all? What a novel thought...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Under Obama, we didn't get that, though. Under Obama, FCC decided to interpret internet access in a way that allowed it to regulate under existing enabling legislation, which may or may not have been appropriate, but that decision was planned to take effect under the Trump adminstration. We never had Net Neutrality under the Obama administration.
If the Obama administration had lobbied for legislation, instead of taking shortcuts of creative interpretations, then there'd be a law in place that FCC would probably be the agency responsible for enforcing. It's actually not too late do do that now, in fact. It's never too late, really, as congress always has the capability to create new laws.
The EFF describes the FCC's official plan to kill net neutrality as "riddled with technical errors and factual inaccuracies," including, for example, a false distinction between "Internet access service" and "a distinct transmission service" which the EFF calls "utterly ridiculous and completely ungrounded from reality."
Except that's not why net neutrality is being axed.
Such a tempest in a teapot about net neutrality! Or perhaps more accurately, a misdirection of the issues in order to spark outrage.
Let's all get together with wailing and gnashing of teeth about the technical issues surrounding net neutrality. Oh, the humanity!
(The reality: Congress specifically directed that the internet should be unregulated, FCC tried to regulate the internet before and was shot down by the supreme court, current NN regulation is an overreach by a federal agency and we *totally* don't want federal agencies to start making regulations that go against congress' explicit wishes, on their own and without oversight.)
Let's all bewail and moan about nothing we can do! We're doomed to have ISPs run roughshod over our very lives beacuse of this one issue!
(The reality: Get some of the big players (Microsoft, Facebook Google) to write up what a NN law should look like and get a congress member to propose it. That's not hard, it happens all the time, and wtf are people not discussing this commonsense solution?)
And the internetz will be ruined! All ISPs will be chargind from both ends, and twice from the middle! Uphill both ways, and in the snow!
(The reality: The NN law is only a year or so old, the internet wasn't ruined before the law, and if there's any problem we can make regulations at that time to address the specific problems.)
But let's hold a candlelight vigil and blame the current administration, because our internet that we love and hold so dearly is on it's way out.
(The reality: The biggest problem is lack of competition, which is founded on exclusive deals that prevent other companies from breaking into the market, and exclusive use of telephone poles and related restrictions. NN doesn't address this issue, it's the elephant in the room, and wtf are people not moaning and wailing about *that* all over the media, instead of this one minor issue?)
Oh, the reality!
Start hording content on old HHD's. I feel a storm brewing. And admit to nothing electronically or otherwise, the walls have eye's. lol
Once these freaks can shape the net things are going to change fast.
It seems unlikely that they don't actually understand it. The problem here is an active attempt to do harm rather than just the usual incompetence. So the fact that they are publishing stuff that is wrong on this many levels just means that they are taking a lead from their masters and recognizing that they can say what they like regardless of any concept of reality.
Equally the general public will find it unlikely that they don't actually know so the EFF campaign might not be very effective as lobbying.
The EFF does not know that, for residential home use, transport and Internet services are bundled by most providers.
Large enterprises indeed contract separate for transport and Internet services.
Many enterprises just use transport services to connect their branch offices to a central office.
Perhaps the FCC wanted to be sure both transport & Internet services were addressed, whether or not they are bundled.
Then Why the hell let them REGULATE The thing?!?
Life as we know it will end once Net Neutrality is repealed.
The only rational response is for everybody to march through the streets naked then douse themselves with gasoline and strike a match. This will also have the side benefit of reducing their carbon footprints to zero.
There is a good reason why people have to go through job interviews in order to work in a specific field. You've got to prove you're qualified and have an idea what you're doing so that when you get to touch things nothing blows up. The whole FCC with Mr Pai is incompetent and should be fired. Right now. Given his absolute lack of fundamental knowledge about networks and how ignorant he is, it becomes obvious that he must have been placed in his current office due to purely political reasons and must have also taken a lot of money from Verizon and others.
I have a dream that one day every single politician/CEO will have to have X year of experience in a given field before being allowed to make any decisions.
they just don't care to run it the way you want them to. They're not stupid. Stop treating them as such. These people are winning and the rest of us are losing. One of the chief things that gets them support is that their supporters _don't_like_being_made_to_feel_dumb. I can't emphasize that enough. You won't believe the number of people who voted Trump (which is why we're losing NN, let us not forget) because they wanted to show people who looked down on them that they have political strength and power.
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Obama did not make undoing the Bush presidency his own undertaking, in fact he kept a lot of Bush era policies that needed to stay in place. You're a moron.
the FCC also has a troublingly limited knowledge of how the Domain Name System (DNS) works -- even though hundreds of engineers tried to explain it to them this past summer
Well obviously this was "Mansplaining" and therefore invalid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Common users do expect their provider to provide DNS. This could easily be eliminated if operating systems used a default DNS resolver provided by someone other than the ISPs, but as it is now, users will complain that "the internet is down" if the ISPs don't provide a DNS resolver.
You got it in one. Congratulations.
Anyway you didn't get net neutrality in fact - you got overbearing government regulation by fiat instead of legislation.
Thankfully Obama is gone and that behavior won't stand.
Net Neutrality is an effort to bend the curve back. It's better than just ceding the remaining control of the internet to Comcast.
Oh, you're one of those jackoffs. No, "normal people" do not consider moderation and voting to be acts of censorship.
You should really learn the difference between the content on the internet and the delivery of bandwidth. You're very confused as to what Net Neutrality means.
If the EFF was anything but another set of financially motivated jackoffs, they would have emphasized how that specific contention relates to the idea of competing with Slashdot by operating your own server at home.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/google-fiber-continues-awful-isp-tradition-banning-servers
But they didn't. They merely referred to it as an "awful tradition", not a matter of Free Speech or Network Neutrality. Count the number of times they mention the NN term in that article. *Once*. The EFF is just as disingenuous about 'understanding how the internet and free speech and network neutrality work' as any jackoff out there.
Not that people need to be reminded of this, but a huge part of this administration is irresponsible and dangerous ignorance or pure maliciousness to the benefit of few, which has not changed anything so far quite unfortunately.
I hope the EFF, ACLU and the lawsuits that are coming against the FCC results in something. Unfortunately though, the justice system isn't showing many signs that it's all that much different from the administration too.
Did anyone else read the article and find that the examples citing the fcc not understanding the internet were pretty weak? Take the first example:
The FCC Still Doesnâ(TM)t Understand That Using the Internet Means Having Your ISP Transmit Packets For You
The article cites the following statements taken from the fcc document
End users do not expect to receive (or pay for) two distinct servicesâ"both Internet access service and a distinct transmission service, for example.â
Certainly what the fcc is saying is true, that users expect to pay a single access fee for internet access. So how does this relate exactly to the articleâ(TM)s claim that the fcc doesnâ(TM)t understand using the internet means having your ISP transmit packets for you? Maybe I am missing something but it seems if the article is not in sync with what the fcc is trying to say and why the fcc chose to use this hypothetical counter example.
Those that have no idea how the internet works want to dictate how it should work.
Hopefully it's also going to end as usual: Nobody gives a shit about their "regulations" and thing continue to run like they did.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
they know full well how it works. They're doing it on purpose because their corporate overlords demand it. But hey, the submitter is a jackass that fell for the head fake
As others have said: If Obama cured cancer, Trump would bring it back.
The EFF is giving way too much credit to the current FCC if they are giving them the benefit of the doubt that they just don't know any better. Ajit and friends know exactly what they're doing, and are doing it anyway, because that's what the people pulling their strings told them to do. They were all bought and paid for even before election day.
It really is kind of a sad statement about how far we've fallen when an organization that should barely register on most people's radar it's so boring, is sparking protests managing to gather a couple hundred people in multiple locations. Not to mention we have a President claiming quite overtly that he is only going to nominate judges that hold specific views on particular political issues.
EFF: this is how the internet *is*.
FCC: this is how our backers think the internet *aught be*.
Congress can overrule the FCC any time they want. The Senate also could ...
Let me stop you right there.
Congress made an explicit decision not to regulate the internet.
The FCC can't overrule the will of congress, and in fact their prior attempt (prior to the one being discussed) was struck down by the supreme court.
Further, by framing it this way you're implying that this as a failure of government. The FCC is working exactly as intended: these commissioners were nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican...
You have a visceral argument putting blame on the Republicans.
*IF* you want to blame someone, blame Democrats for going against Congress' explicit decision.
The Republican government is working exactly as intended: the FCC made a mistake, it was a rather egregious mistake, and now it's being corrected.
Your point about the legislature is spot on, however. Congress can and should simply enact a law to settle the matter.
(The reality: The NN law is only a year or so old, the internet wasn't ruined before the law, and if there's any problem we can make regulations at that time to address the specific problems.)
It bothers me that you might actually not be trolling and that you believe the crap you just wrote.
Prior to Ex-Chairman Wheeler's actions, there were several instances of violations of what we call Net Neutrality which is why he took the actions he did.
The problem isn't that there weren't problems before, it's that people like you have no idea how bad it could have gotten had we not taken action.
I believe pretty-much everything I write, I don't think lying is effective or useful.
I also don't believe in deflection or misdirection, so let me say this once again for you seem to be special:
THIS ISSUE ISN'T TECHNICAL, IT'S LEGAL!
I wrote in all caps and in bold, so that it might stand out more in the overall text.
Did you hear it? Did you understand the words?
The legal issues far outweigh the technical issues. I'm personally favor of NN, but not at the expense of giving all federal agencies the ability to regulate whatever they want, and to go against the wishes of congress.
Did you understand that? Did you hear the words, and do they make sense?
Now give me a legal argument as to why the FCC should step in and enforce NN, noting that their prior attempt was struck down by the supreme court.
I'm waiting.
This false distinction between “Internet access service” and “a distinct transmission service” is utterly ridiculous and completely ungrounded from reality. As the FCC would have it, there is some sort of “transmission” that is separate from the Internet that ISPs provide access to.
As usual I feel behind the curve in trying to understand where these guys are coming from.
Back in the day, when the "Internet" and AOL was the same thing to many people and you accessed it through a dial-up modem, there was definitely a distinction between packet transmission and ISP provided services. I remember trying to get USENET access through my dad's system where AOL was the "ISP." Everything in their app worked fine and you could do some "Internety" things but on the Windows side there didn't seem to be anything like a protocol stack that was recognizable to anyone used to using *nix type systems. Maybe I just didn't know what I was doing but I couldn't even get a PING from the command line shell to my home system which had a public IP address.
Wouldn't the FCC's position make sense if this was still the way we were doing things? Maybe the top people there think it is.
It's worthless.
It's like selling brass knuckles as a paper weight. The more broad they make terms, the more crap enforcement can get away with.
They just need to know who's giving them their money.
At his point, that's the people who run the telco and cable companies.
What, you still think that the higher-ups in the Federal Government actually care about We The People? Have you been hiding under a rock for the last several Presidential administrations?
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
Yes, and that is why we don't want the FCC getting more power to regulate the Internet!
For some reason, the EFF seems to think that it is a good idea to put an organization that "doesn't understand how Internet access works" and "has a troublingly limited knowledge of how the Domain Name System works" in charge of regulating them.
Thank you, EFF, for making the case against net neutrality so well: no sane person would want to give that power to an organization that doesn't understand Internet access.
They are all lawyers
Management is the huge wrench that is thrown in the gears of Net Neutrality. Get rid of management and let the Engineers run it.
Neither is Trump. You completely missed the point of the comment. Try again.
The FCC can't overrule the will of congress, and in fact their prior attempt (prior to the one being discussed) was struck down by the supreme court.
I assume that you're talking about the "third way" approach, in which the FCC tried to impose network neutrality while designating ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services." The court struck that down
I think that person was talking about the "Nth way, N>2" approach. Open your mind. Think outside the /existing legislation box/. Sure, plenty of possible legislation will be shot down by scotus, that is why you have to demonstrate your competency as legislaters and draft something that won't. I understand your pessimism, but please don't frame the argument in any way that lets congress off the hook. It's on them. Always has been.
Were you asleep the last 6 years of the Obama administration? The republicans were the obstructionist "Party of NO." Getting congress to do literally ANYTHING was futile.
Has anybody else notice prices going up on Netflix and PS Vue? Both services increase prices this month! How does this help competition? The FCC tells the Comcast and Verizon they can throttle diffent packets Of legitimate competitors to their cable services unless they pay for access to us. Government sanctioned extortion and antitrust. This is what you get vote Republican. They are just going to follow what the superpacs them to do. No thought about the cost to the American people. Picking winners and losers based on donation amount. We will never win with them in office.
Why are any of those who are 'in charge' in that position? I think it's been established that it's not 'because democracy.'
Requiem for the American Dream
There is plenty of competition in the market to keep the Internet neutral: the Internet was originally created by the DOD decades before multiple corporations offered more affordable service. We have gone from 28k modems to 1 gig per second fiber-to-the-home within my short 30-year lifespan. Why don't people spend time complaining about the cost of a gallon of gas in 2017, or even the price of a Whopper at Burger King--both of which are quite a bit more expensive than they were 30 years ago, even though they are required for basic survival??? What about bottled water for that matter?!?
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With fibre-optic cable networks, the signals travel at a fixed bit rate, but you get a maximum data transfer rate based on your pricing option).
Would that be characterizable as a "paid fast lane" with the "lower priced slow lane" option? OMG. What a bad joke.
Bush era screwed up so badly that the rest of the world now suffers from influx of refugees. Clinton era decisions are the cause for the crash in '08. Obama was a mediocre president that lacked power to clean up the crap from both earlier administrations and therefore we got Trump who by the rest of the world is seen as a clown.
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Corollary: if Obama called forth the Devil from the pits of hell, Trump would drive him back.
If the FCC doesn't know how the internet works, then why are you so enthusiastic about making them regulate it in the first place, Slashdot?
Like what, Patriot Act extensions, Guantanamo Bay and murdering people with drones?
If the board of a bank is incompetent, not even communists would say that means all banks are incompetently run. They'd say that bank needs a new board. The problem with the FCC isn't that it's a government organization. The problem is that it has been stacked with corporate hacks appointed by both parties.
Which means - stay with me here - the solution isn't to get rid of the FCC, the solution is to stop nominating hacks like Pai to be on it.
Bush era screwed up so badly that the rest of the world now suffers from influx of refugees. Clinton era decisions are the cause for the crash in '08. Obama was a mediocre president that lacked power to clean up the crap from both earlier administrations and therefore we got Trump who by the rest of the world is seen as a clown.
I'm from the rest of the world, and I hate to break this to you ,,, but we'd consider calling Trump a clown an insult to clowns everywhere.
Buffoon is the word I'd choose.
Of course, I'd use other words too, but I know Americans don't like to hear cursing so I won't offend you by writing them here.
Your point being? His voters wanted him to undo all of the extra-legal things Obama did.
Like what, Patriot Act extensions, Guantanamo Bay and murdering people with drones?
No. Those were the policies that didn't need to stay in place.